She quotes AFL-CIO Political Director, Mike Podhorzer, who says: "The primary goal of unions is to create good paying jobs and that's something that young people can't find these days."

The primary goal of unions is to create good paying jobs? How is that?

I thought the primary goal of unions was to hold onto and to improve existing jobs, even if it means fewer jobs and shutting out people — like today's young people — who don't currently have jobs. I think a lot of young people like the idea of unions and will come out to rallies and elections in support of unions, and they're not analyzing their own personal interests very well. That's youthful idealism. But how far can you go with that when the interests diverge?

In Wisconsin, I've talked to many young people who are passionate about supporting union members whose jobs are far better than the jobs they have or expect to get any time soon. They seem to believe in the solidarity and to hope — without examining the causality — that the benefits will trickle down to them. Meade and I have challenged various young protesters about the cogency of their thinking, and they don't have a good answer. They want to believe they know who the bad guys are. As the chant goes: "Union busting/It's disgusting."

Having no job at all? That's disgusting too. But you have to figure out who to be disgusted with.

232 comments:

The AFL-CIO kills many jobs as they should be created. With so much overtime going to union workers, isn't that grounds for hiring more laborers? Why pay 100 people for 60 hour work weeks if you could pay 150 people for 40 hour work weeks?

I thought the primary goal of unions was to hold onto and to improve existing jobs, even if it means fewer jobs and shutting out people — like today's young people — who don't currently have jobs.

You have a very warped and limited view of unions. You apparently won't be happy until everyone (except the privileged few who have tenured professorships at state universities) are working in jobs with no benefits and low pay.

Sorry Sparky but it's the employer that can create good paying jobs not the other way around!

Sorry, employers seek to employ workers for the lowest wage and least benefits possible. When unions are destroyed (as they have been over the last thirty years) wages and benefits drop because employers have more power when it comes to negotiating wages, benefits and working conditions.

I've read excerpts from his bio, and he was a fervent supporter of H1B immigration, so that he could keep down salaries to American engineers and programmers. He lobbied presidents directly for more H1B immigration.

People think that the effects of immigration are felt only in low level jobs.

The H1B program encourages American companies to import Indian and Pakistani programmers, instead of hiring American programmers. This depresses everybody's wages and takes away American programmer's jobs.

Not only do Indian and Pakistani programmers work for less, they don't count on the quota balance sheets, like a native white hetero man does. So, in many cases, the immigrant programmer gets a preference over a native programmer.

So, can we get pissed off at Steve Jobs for undercutting the wages and job security of American programmers?

In the end, the alliance is fated to fail, for the reasons that Ann suggested - that unions are interested in maintaining overpriced and over-compensated jobs for their members, and in this case, paid for by the rest of us, including those kids.

Unions do not create high paying jobs. Rather, they ultimately trade lower paid jobs for fewer higher paid ones. Sure, they try to jack up wages and benefits without giving up jobs (and, hence restrictive work practices that ultimately drive the companies into bankruptcy). But, ultimately, they sacrifice jobs for benefits.

Well professor, You need to talk to kids away from UW. Many of the kids I've taught and coached have a cynical view of unions and governmemt. They saw better than many adults the laziness and incompetence fostered by teacher's unions. And, they almost all believe social security won't be there for them and resent having to be part of the system. They loved the Bush proposal to be able to invest @ least some of their own money. Experience the real world, Ms. Althouse.

The unions in Ohio ran scare tactics commercials about a lack of police, firefigters, EMTs, teachers, commode flusters, etc and the havoc it would wreak if Senate Bill 5 was not repealed. The ads were effective and the unions "won."

There will be lay offs in numerous municipalities in the areas mentioned above. The net impact of the union "victory" in the balloting will be a net loss of jobs. BUT, the unions will still collect dues and the union bosses will still reap benefits and pay beyond and above its members. And, the naive youngins will have just as hard a time finding jobs as ever.

unions are interested in maintaining overpriced and over-compensated jobs for their members

The overpriced and overcompensated jobs are in private industry, especially in the upper echelons of it. The gap between rich and poor has grown larger over the last thirty years. If the economic theories of you, Althouse and others were true, that gap wouldn't have expanded so fast over the last thirty years.

They seem to believe in the solidarity and to hope — without examining the causality — that the benefits will trickle down to them.

Used to be that people felt that way about build their own fortunes. The thought that anyone with a good idea and hard work could rise to the level of the affluent was common. The problem is that hard work part.

Now, we've got a system that blatantly rewards sloth. All you have to do is get that first choice gig and you're set for life. Expectations have been dumbed down along with the population as we continue our tacit embrace of all things mediocre. So, why aspire to work hard when you can simply get that sweet union gig?

Only those gigs are drying up and those that are currently beneficiaries of union largess will fight to hold on to them without cluing in the young un-unioned pre-worker that they have less than a good shot at becoming one of the rewarded.

Sorry, employers seek to employ workers for the lowest wage and least benefits possible. When unions are destroyed (as they have been over the last thirty years) wages and benefits drop because employers have more power when it comes to negotiating wages, benefits and working conditions.

You seem to be mired in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. The problem with your theory is first that we now have world markets. So, overpaying for autos or steel just doesn't work anymore. So, companies here are forced to either cut their compensation (including benefits), including enacting work efficiencies, or go out of business.

And enacting tariffs and the like to protect unions just costs the rest of us that much more wealth. Why should the rest of us work for lower wages and benefits to pay for our cars, etc., so that the union members building such can live better than those buying the products, when the rest of us would live better by importing these things?

So, the only place where unionization has been able to increase over the last couple of decades has been with government workers, who, up until now, have been immune from economic pressures. No more. For a lot of local governments, the cost of retirements often exceed that of active employees, which are higher than for comparably placed employees in private companies.

I agree with Pogo. Everyone is greedy - labor, management, stockholders, government employees - everyone. It is a fact of nature. We have seen more than enough evidence over the last year or so that unionized government employees are no less greedy than anyone else, and, indeed, are more than willing to drive their government employers into bankruptcy in order to make sure that they get their own.

And in laissez faire, businesses tend toward monopolies and cartels with the power to keep competitors out, wages low, and working conditions bad.

Not really, but sounds good.

The reality is that the only way to enforce such monopolies over the long term is through government intervention - i.e. crony capitalism/crony socialism - which is not laissez faire, but rather, closer to fascism (which is a form of crony capitalism/socialism).

I think it is kinda cute, in a naive sort of way, how some folks still beleive the old myth that there are "bosses" in unions. They seem to think that the people who are voted into those leadership positions have the power to "fire" someone from a local union.

Whenever I see someone use the term "union boss", it instantly tells me that they never looked into the issue/topic themselves and instead are just spitting back up whatever was spooned-fed to 'em...

Bruce Hayden said... I agree with Pogo. Everyone is greedy - labor, management, stockholders, government employees - everyone. It is a fact of nature. We have seen more than enough evidence over the last year or so that unionized government employees are no less greedy than anyone else, and, indeed, are more than willing to drive their government employers into bankruptcy in order to make sure that they get their own.

Why use the left's negative terminology? People act in their own self-interest, and most people are not greedy in any evil kind of way. Most just want to accumulate wealth for the obvious benefits it provides. It would be illogical to desire to be poorer.

Actually, study after study has shown that the total compensation package for government employees (at all levels) is comparable for similar employees in private employment.

The problem with those studies most often is that they do not disaggregate wages and benefits by education level and position. Thus, clerks tend to earn significantly more, esp. considering benefits and retirement, than do their private counterparts, while attorneys may earn less - but they do so without taking on the risks that the private attorneys do. The lower the education and training level required to actually do a job, the more the union (and government) workers make in comparison to their private counterparts, while the higher the level of education and training actually required, the better private employees do.

It's not the insight I'm offering in the post. I'm saying the young people are idealistic and not quite ready to focus on self-interest. The more pragmatic organizers at the union level seek to exploit them... seek to exploit their idealism-driven belief that the corporations out out to exploit them.

The primary goal of unions is to create good paying jobs... for union bosses. No private employers are stupid enough to let the unions "create" good paying jobs. The only place they can "create" good paying jobs is to tax the private sector to "create" govt jobs. That's exactly what they are doing in Ohio.

Whenever I see someone use the term "union boss", it instantly tells me that they never looked into the issue/topic themselves and instead are just spitting back up whatever was spooned-fed to 'em...

Well, you'd be wrong there.

My mother was a factory worker for over 30 years. For the first 15 years, she worked in a non-union factory.

For the next 15 years, she worked for a union factory. Everything was great for a while. Then, the endless demands for higher wages, shorter hours and more benefits finally pushed the company into closing down the plant and moving it to Asia.

No it didn't, it retained the right of employees to have a union if they want one--which is by the way a fundamental human right.

I disagree that government employees have a fundamental human right to unionize.

The reason that I find this somewhat egregious, is that government employee unions have entered a cabal against the taxpayers in many jurisdictions around the country. Union dues are automatically deducted from employee paychecks, and a large portion of those union dues end up in the coffers of (mostly) Democratic politicians, who end up on the other side of the bargaining table, bargaining away our long term interests for their short term ones. And, hence, all the state, county, and esp. local governments that are effectively bankrupt today as a result of guaranteeing their unionized employees over-generous wages, benefits and retirements.

"Ed Mullins, president of the New York Police Department’s Sergeant’s Benevolent Association, said Thursday that if one of his sergeants is assaulted while policing the protests, his union would file civil lawsuits seeking monetary damages against individual protesters as well as any groups whose support has sustained the demonstrations in lower Manhattan."

Many people have a romantic vision of the past. For reactionaries like my father-in-law the romantic past is when you could rebuild a car without a computer and paint it without worrying about aerosols.

For liberals the romantic past is when unions reigned triumphant and FDR rescued the country from capitalists.

Unions are a vehicle for fantasy. Young people like fantasy. And some old people too.

"Having no job at all? That's disgusting too. But you have to figure out who to be disgusted with."

Since this post is talking about students after college, it's a pretty sad (but accurate) comment on the education they received. The economics of unionism are not hard to understand. The point is to control both supply and demand of labor -- the closed shop being the union's ideal. By doing so, the cost of labor is artificially raised, which necessarily deflates demand for labor (it's the whole point from an economic perspective). Unionized work rules make the effect even starker. That benefits current job holders and union members (past and present) generally, but does the opposite for the out of work.

Naturally, today's college graduates cannot be expected to understand auch matters. It's possible, of course, to recognize where one's economic interest lies and to vote contrary to it. But the pitch by the AFL-CIO guy has a different spin. I think he knows his audience.

I am curious to know something...do you really beleive that the primary reason for workers to organize together is in order to create high-paying jobs for the leadership? At first glance, it would seem to be just a lil' slice of snark...but based on other remarks you have made it seems as if you see nothing-at-all good with "unions", and thus perhaps it was a sincere remark after all.

I think the turning point will be when the idealistic young realize that greying union types use Toshibas instead of Macs.

The aesthetic irony of the self-consciously sexy/idealistic students supporting these old farts who screw them over, and probably have little-to-no real enthusiasm for the kinds of "sexy", civil-right-ie issues the students are most whipped-up about (just how do the Detroit auto workers stand on transgender bathroom privileges, anyway?) is always good for some sad mirth.

wv: delypard Probably he wrote the post-structuralist manual on lesbionics of transgression in Shakespeare's Sonnets. Ask OWS.

Well paid workers have more money to spend and invest and can afford better education for their children, thus creating more jobs.

If that's true for "well-paid" workers, Freder, certainly there's some multiplier that should show that wealthy are even more able to spend far more, invest far more, and afford even better education for their children, thus creating even more jobs than the "well-paid" worker.

I disagree that government employees have a fundamental human right to unionize

Don't complain to me, take it up with the U.N. and their damn Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see article 23). If you check the Wikipedia page for it, you will see a nice picture of Elanor Rooosevelt (one of the authors) looking at a copy of it.

I disagree that government employees have a fundamental human right to unionize

Don't complain to me, take it up with the U.N. and their damn Universal Declaration of Human Rights (see article 23). If you check the Wikipedia page for it, you will see a nice picture of Elanor Rooosevelt (one of the authors) looking at a copy of it.

We don't live by the UN Declaration of anything. We have a Constitution.

Nowhere are unions given the power to say where someone can and can't work.

Freder continued: When unions are destroyed (as they have been over the last thirty years) wages and benefits drop...

Freder is suggesting causation, whereas he really only has correlation, and, indeed, there are a lot of other factors are much more likely causative, including, but not limited to, more international trade.

If that's true for "well-paid" workers, Freder, certainly there's some multiplier that should show that wealthy are even more able to spend far more, invest far more, and afford even better education for their children, thus creating even more jobs than the "well-paid" worker.

A thousand people are more likely to each buy a pair of shoes every year than a wealthy person is to buy a thousand shoes every year.

ST is right about the H1B program both holding down wages and taking jobs from American citizens. This is also particularly true in the Nursing profession. Both in LA and in New Orleans it is increasingly rare to find American nurses in ANY hospital except for an isolated few still hanging on in Sr mgt. Phillipeano RNs and those from Pakistan and Africa (Nigeria especially) are almost totally dominate--with an increasing number from India and Vietnam--especially in LA. In N.O. post-Katrina, both E. and W. Jefferson (Parish) hospitals hired 100 Phillipeano RNs each in one fell swoop. As a result wages have been stagnant to receding in both places for several years now..

And of course the dollars don't all stay here. Many are remitted back to families overseas and most of the Vietnamese and Phillipeano Nurses plan to retire in their home countries where they can live like a King, er, Queen on their US dollar-denominated pensions and where the cost-of-living is low, real-estate is cheap cheap cheap and luxury condos can be had for the proverbial song..

Well paid workers have more money to spend and invest and can afford better education for their children, thus creating more jobs.

The less I have to pay in taxes in order to pay for the salaries and benefits of government employee slackers, the more money I, and every other tax payer, will have to spend and invest and can afford better education for their children, thus creating more jobs sans the government waste and corruption. Plus, I earned the money in a freely, mutually agread upon exchange of labor for services rather than forcefully taking it under threat of imprisonment or seizure of property.

in an important omission, the study ignores the unfunded but real, imminent cost of public employee retirement benefits such as retiree medical benefits because these data are not reported to the statistical bureaus. Thus, they overlook a highly valuable retiree medical benefit because it's unfunded. The same is true for unfunded pension costs that have now doubled because of 2000-2008 investment underperformance and a 20-year trend toward earlier retirement ages in some states (despite increases in life expectancy). So the taxpayers are on the hook for much higher benefits costs than the researcher's models have acknowledged.

The other major flaw to the study and its use of education levels as a index is how public education employees skew the results.

Using education level as a index may be the only way to tackle the data, but it's hardly relevant to evaluating the worth of an employee.

Undergraduate and masters degrees are not created equal and the streamlining of education masters for public school teachers does no good to anyone. The Huffington Post has a very good article on that (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/20/teachers-bonuses-masters-degrees-_n_786449.html).

Here's a key graf:

Ninety percent of teachers' masters degrees are in education, not subjects such as English or math, according to a study by Marguerite Roza and Raegen Miller for the Center on Reinventing Education at the University of Washington.

Their colleague, research professor Dan Goldhaber, explained that that research dating back to a study he did in 1997 has shown that students of teachers with master's degrees show no better progress in student achievement than their peers taught by teachers without advanced degrees.

Goldhaber said his findings were criticized vehemently in the 1990s, but repeated studies since then have confirmed the results.

But, effectiveness of a degree isn't an issue for "Out-of-Balance" authors Ken Bender and John Haywood. The useless masters degrees earned by teachers is, in fact, the main statistical prop for their argument.

Don't the young people know that their tuiton is going up like crazy because public pensions and health retirement costs are crowding out all other parts of the budget including money to universities? The unfunded pension liability will have to be paid by them if they help the union stay in power. Hopefully, they will learn before it it too late.

Libs can turn that old zero-sum assumption on and off like a light switch, can't they? When shareholders and managers get more money, it's axiomatic that it must be at someone else's expense, but when union members get more money, darned if it doesn't benefit everybody!

In the real world, a young employee who wants to get ahead in his career works smarter, harder and longer. An exceptional young employee may be promoted or receive larger pay raises over older workers who have been there longer. In the union's world, working smarter, harder and longer gets you . . nothing. A young union worker can do absolutely nothing to advance himself, because everyone makes the same wage and rewards (better shifts, locations, etc.) are distributed on the basis of seniority. All the younger worker can do is "put in his time" until he's old enough to have seniority, and he quickly learns (or he's told) that it's foolish to work hard. This logic may have appealed to young people in the 1940s, but it doesn't today. Today's young people won't even entertain the idea of staying in a job for years, and they are eager to advance and improve themselves. The biggest reason they change jobs is to advance their careers.

What are these students being taught at the Universities? This is what happens when educational institutions become one-sided political cultures. You could probably find better deductive reasoning skills a state penitentiary than the a State University.

People don't start a business just 'cause they have some extra money sitting around. They start a business because they see a marketplace that needs to be satisfied.

Ah...everyone's a rational actor at all times.

If that were true, there wouldn't be so many business failures. People start businesses all the time without proper market research and/or a good product or service to sell. I have two separate relatives with zero business experience that tried to start businesses when they suddenly came into money. One failed miserably, but they did make the attempt.

If I suddenly came into money, I would definitely try to start a business doing something I enjoy doing, not what the market says will be successful.

I work in education and I think one reason so many good young educators leave the profession is that the best and most productive teachers get the same raise as the worst and least productive ones. It's very demotivating for employees with high enthusiasm and a good work ethic to receive nothing more than a pat on the back for good performance.

Trade unions were a reaction to robber-baron capitalism--Carnegie, Rockefeller, JP Morgan, et al. With a proper regulatory system in effect--and say controls of robber-baron capitalism and dynasties (ie Paris Hiltons), as the Founders wanted, unions might not be necessary.

If what the union provides is desirable to the employee, they will want to pay for it.

By the mere fact of being employed by a company with a union contract, one is receiving the benefits the union provides.

(I'm gonna guess that you are also in favor of all taxes being 100% voluntary, eh?)

If the services of a union isn't desired, then the employee should seek work at a company that didn't have a majority of the workers vote to organize together and collectively bargain. Or vote for different union leadership that better represents your personal views. Or vote to decertify the local union. Many choices are available, so I fail to see how coercion comes into play.

"So they would get the services that are provided by the union, but not have to pay anything at all for it?"

A union would better concentrate on those particular services and not charge as much for dues if joining and paying were not mandated. All that mandatory money sloshing around simply spawns corruption and waste, as well as a host of things that unions do that don't really benefit the duespayer.

I voluntarily join professional associations because they do good things for me. I am not naive enough to believe that they would do a better job if I was forced to join and pay them more money.

By the mere fact of being employed by a company with a union contract, one is receiving the benefits the union provides.

Wrong. An employee can seek work and negotiate his/her own hours, pay, vacation, etc. If you want to argue that both union and non-union get to use the same bathroom the union has demanded gold-plated shitters to be installed in, I'd grant you that one.

However, in mixed shops, which I have worked it, common sense and the good nature of most people in the world created zero friction. When the union got something the non-union employees wanted, they picked up a couple of recruits. A year or so later, when the opposite was true, ie, non-union negotiating for something union members didn't get, they lost a couple who cut their own deals.

Why do you have such low opinions of people in general? Why do you come down on the side of coercion?

Do you think Americans are too fucking stupid to know what's good for them so they need to be forced to pay taxes, or are Americans fucking selfish and will take but not contribute so they need to be forced to pay taxes?

Or do you beleive taxes should be voluntary, but every citizen still receives all the services provided by the gov't?

Yes, as Abdul Abulbul Amir and Meade have commented, the "primary goal of unions" is best assessed with regard to the incentives of those who run unions. Real people run unions, so they behave like other real people. But unlike any other enterprise in America, they often have a legal franchise on monopoly power (of the labor supply).

One should expect unions to behave the way those incentives push them: they aggregate power, comfort, and money for themselves and those who support them (union members, many of whom are forced to support them), and they fight every force that threatens their power, comfort, and money, even to the point of their own destruction. This is how the Soviet Union fell; it is how Detroit became a ghost city.

If I suddenly came into money, I would definitely try to start a business doing something I enjoy doing, not what the market says will be successful.

I think this is the most neglected beneficial aspect of free markets. Individuals can choose whatever tradeoffs they want between money and job characteristics. If the people who think they can estimate the "comparable worth" of public-sector vs. private-sector employees would stop to consider ScottM's perspective, they might acknowledge the folly of the exercise.

People who are truly underpaid do not fight tooth and nail to preserve their jobs--they quit in order to take one of those jobs offering more money.

As a recent MBA student, I can tell you that nobody spends money like Big Education. I have no idea where it goes. Some numbers. A typical MBA class has 60 students in it. The class lasts 3:20. Each student pays $325 for each class session.

That means the university takes in $19,500 for EACH MBA class session (disclaimer...not all classes have 60 students in them).

You misunderstand if you believe I'm "itching for a fight". I'm sorry I thought you had enough integrity to answer a couple of questions. I was wholly serious about their content re your previous comments on the topic at hand.

@purplepenquin--Your point about non-members free-riding off the union's activities is valid. However, I don't think it ends the discussion.

A union that was specific to the employer might have a valid claim for mandatory membership. If it delivered benefits greater than the cost of union membership, then workers would be attracted to that employer (and therefore to that union). If it didn't deliver, then the union (and the firm) would lose employees.

But real-world unions organize workers not just across all firms in an industry but across many industries. This makes mandatory union membership a grant of monopoly power to those unions. That power is used to restrict entry of new workers and to entrench the union "leadership".

you mean all those ueber-wealthy private universities such as the Ivy League, U.of Chi., Steinford, USC? Or perhaps the corporate funded and controlled state colleges like the UCs system. Yes you are correct--finance capitalism's control of the higher education racket is corrupt as fuck and rather unfortunate. Tommy Trojan, oppressor

Yes, as Abdul Abulbul Amir and Meade have commented, the "primary goal of unions" is best assessed with regard to the incentives of those who run unions.

While I strongly disagree with the opinion (the main reason my union organized back-in-the-day was for safer working conditions and better pay, not to enrich the national leaders) knowing that some people truly feel this way helps be better understand why they are so deeply anti-union. If I also beleived as such, I would probably hold that same viewpoint.

However, I'm still interested in knowing...how exactly do these guys "boss" me around? Ya'll seem to throw that meme around without any thought to what you're sayin'

The Governor has more say about my workplace than the union leaders that have been mentioned in this thread, so would it be considered appropriate for folks to refer to Walker as the "Boss of Wisconsin"?

The Governor has more say about my workplace than the union leaders that have been mentioned in this thread, so would it be considered appropriate for folks to refer to Walker as the "Boss of Wisconsin"?

"Sorry for taking you seriously. I'll try not to do so in the future."

Penguin and others, I won't have such as problem with forced unionization, if the union primarily just worked to help out their employees.

But what does promoting abortion have to due with teaching?

And WEAC....on their web site this spring and summer, they listed where Governor Walker was going to be speaking, and told their members to bring drums and horns and try to prevent the governor from speaking.

Why should you have to join a fuck up organization like this as a condition to your employment?

PurplePeng said: If the services of a union isn't desired, then the employee should seek work at a company that didn't have a majority of the workers vote to organize together and collectively bargain. Or vote for different union leadership that better represents your personal views. Or vote to decertify the local union

Or, they could move to a right to work state. Where pretty much everything is better in terms of employee-employer relations, and where the employers are going anyway.

Not exactly Don Bella. People who inherited a boxcar of shekels and then decide to become "entrepreneurs" may create jobs. Rarely is there a rags to riches story, except when a frat boy-MBA type makes shit up.

"Somehow I don't see an alliance between young people and organizations that enforce seniority rules."

Never underestimate peoples stupidity. Are you familiar with the "bue-green alliance"? Unionists have partnered with radical enviromentalists. I first heard of this in NE Minnesota. Yes, the loggers and miners of Minnesota have partnered with people who want to end logging and mining.

I won't have such as problem with forced unionization, if the union primarily just worked to help out their employees.

The thing is, they do exactly that. Unions are ran from the bottom-up, not the top-down.

The stuff that is on WEAC's webpage is because a majority of the members (who care enough to go to the meetings) want it there. If enough members are upset about the webpage...or anything else...then they can vote to make changes.

No democratically-ran organization is gonna make each&every member happy 100% of the time, so of course there will be some examples that someone will disagree with. But to claim the unions don't serve the members is kinda silly, when it is the members who are the ones running the union.

they could move to a right to work state. Where pretty much everything is better in terms of employee-employer relations, and where the employers are going anyway.

I recently saw a study that shows a worker is more likely to be hurt and/or killed on the job in those states that in a state with a stronger union presence. While I look for that link would you mind sharing what studies/info you have that leads you to think "everything is better" for employees in those states? Thanks...

But to claim the unions don't serve the members is kinda silly, when it is the members who are the ones running the union.

This is a very selfish view. The larger point is the exclusion of nonmembers from the ability to compete for or retain certain jobs. You know, stuff like closed shops and strictly seniority-based compensation and termination rules.

Congratulations on your valuable status as one of the privileged insiders. It's rude of you to flaunt it, though, in a post about deluded students who suffer from false consciousness probably imparted to them by their unionized teachers through the years. Like those schoolkids taken to the anti-Walker rallies last spring.

Big Government, Big Business, and Big Labor all are in favor of the status quo and against change. At that level they tend to get together to stifle innovation and keep the hoi polloi in their place so as to protect their own livelihoods with a minimum of effort.

Rarely is there a rags to riches story, except when a frat boy-MBA type makes shit up.

Rags and riches are relevant. Take a dirt poor, divorced father of three that pays most of his paltry income to child support suddenly inherits around $10k, enough to get a small business off the ground, say a foreign language translation service because he was a linguist in the army.

He goes from from making minimum wage at a grocery store (where he was forced to join the bagger's union, mind you) to making around 60k a year take home. To him, $60k a year is riches he never thought he was ever going to see.

I wouldn't be reading too much into Ohio's election. Special off-year election, low voter turnout, and all that. If the normal folks had voted in the usual general election numbers I strongly suspect the outcome would've been different.

purple penguin, through at least the 1930s, many many unions (especailly auto workers and railroaders) didn't allow African-Americans in their union or the trades. The majority of the members supported this.

So are you fine with being forced to join a union as a condition of employment no matter how offensive that union is, because the majority of its members want those polcies?

If a pro-life person wants to teach in Wisconsin, they should be forced to join a pro-abortion labor union?

purplepenquin said..."At first glance, it would seem to be just a lil' slice of snark...but based on other remarks you have made it seems as if you see nothing-at-all good with "unions", and thus perhaps it was a sincere remark after all.

But no, I don't think unions serve many good purposes anymore and especially public sector unions are corrupted and corrupting. Maybe they will change for the better, now that they are being busted. I hope so, don't you?

Will Rogers, so it had to be before 1935, said he had been to one of them Labor-Management negotiations, and as far as he could see, the only difference between the teams were that the Labor types tended to dress a little better and smoke more expensive cigars than the management suits.

I wouldn't be reading too much into Ohio's election. Special off-year election, low voter turnout, and all that. If the normal folks had voted in the usual general election numbers I strongly suspect the outcome would've been different.

There was 2010 level turnout, higher than 2010 levels in some counties. Only six counties voted to keep SB5. Dems have a 10 point lead on the generic congressional ballot. It will be interesting to see how Republicans, especially Romney, decide how to run in Ohio.

Interesting to see how some who claim that public unions are corrupt while not seeing the utter corruptness [think Wisconsin here] of the people who are trying to destroy them. Willfull blindness, as they say.

I agree. Issue 3, the Ohio Health Care amemdment which calls for exempting residents of Ohio from national health care mandates which would stop any state law from forcing persons, employers or health care providers from participating in a health care system passed with 65.63% of the vote.

This was an anti-Obamacare initiative. Not a great sign for liberal causes.

Also, abuot 2/3s of all school levies and such across the state failed to pass. No mone for those union teachers means fewer jobs.

purplepenquin said...If what the union provides is desirable to the employee, they will want to pay for it.

By the mere fact of being employed by a company with a union contract, one is receiving the benefits the union provides.

(I'm gonna guess that you are also in favor of all taxes being 100% voluntary, eh?)

If the services of a union isn't desired, then the employee should seek work at a company that didn't have a majority of the workers vote to organize together and collectively bargain. Or vote for different union leadership that better represents your personal views. Or vote to decertify the local union. Many choices are available, so I fail to see how coercion comes into play.

11/10/11 12:02 PM

How come one can't get to choose to work in a whites only shop? Or no Jews allowed shop?

As for taxes, interesting idea. Lets pay taxes a la carte on all non core functions. That way I don't have to pay for your pension and benefits and salaries derived from non essential spending such as most entitlement spending and Davis-Bacon Act spending for another.

Do you think Americans are too fucking stupid to know what's good for them so they need to be forced to pay taxes, or are Americans fucking selfish and will take but not contribute so they need to be forced to pay taxes?

Or do you beleive taxes should be voluntary, but every citizen still receives all the services provided by the gov't?"

So I'll take that as C)...right?To answer your question, yes and yes.

But of course they are not the same situation.

Unions provide direct benefits to members. As a matter of fact, their is a uniformity to those benefits to each of their members...same benefits, and same costs. So a union member can connect the dots. They do this for me in exchange for this much of my money. Easy.

In your rebuttal you have a diverse set of individuals paying different rates and receiving different direct benefits. People pay for schools their kids don't go to...or have no kids to all. Roads they never drive down. Do we need a military? As a matter of fact, the complexity of the government budget is too much for anyone to measure individual benefit. That said, we have the best possible workaround, we may be forced to pay taxes, but it is based on a collective decision, through representation.

As a conservative, I wish to limit as much of the responsibility of government as possible. Even the framers knew the wisdom of that.

And tax cuts for the rich trickle down to working people. Except for every time that has been tried. Like the Bush tax cuts, which cost $1 trillion and preceded an unemployment crisis of historical proportion.

If trickle down worked, we should have 1% unemployment today!

In fact, unions do support policies for more and higher paying jobs. They always have. Your screed here is entirely based on right wing caricatures of unions, not reality.

the right wing wants to cut wages and benefits and then claim that this will create more jobs. Well, they have done just that yet --- no jobs.

you can chart the membership in unions in America against the wages and benefits of working people. When we have stronger unions, we have higher wages and benefits. The best economic times for working people in our history were times with high union membership.

The unions represents a structural inequality in the labor market, where the business will succeed or fail based on the market's acceptance. However, in the public sector, they are effectively the illegal fourth branch of government, which undermines our representative government. It's one thing to expect safe work conditions. It's something altogether different to allow cooperative voting in order to accumulate private wealth and, in the process, marginalize the voting rights of citizens.

That said, they were right to protest Mexican truck drivers inside America. The border to our administrative district (i.e., nation) should be treated as a port, no different from our seaports. Well, that's at least one position they pursued correctly.

As for the rest, dreams of instant gratification have, and will continue, to reveal delayed consequences, including progressive theft from taxpayers. The failure of corporations and municipalities is just the beginning. The failure of sovereign entities, including states, will follow, as has been demonstrated in Europe recently, and has been evident in the past through the world.

Unions increase the cost of labor even while reducing the value of that labor. The value is reduced due to union work rules that require more employees than necessary to do a task, and further reduced because union contracts almost always forbid employers from rewarding those who are more productive over those who are less productive (e.g., promotion and retention solely by seniority).

Unions are attractive to young people because they promise a world where one can earn high wages with minimum (just-good-enough) effort and still have good job security.

What’s missing is that that can only happen in areas with limited competition- such as government, or within oligarchies such as Detroit’s Big Three were before they were decimated by competition, or within government-enforced monopolies (such as electric utilities).

IF competition could be eliminated and we had a closed economy then perhaps we could all be union and all get paid paid twice as much. BUT we’d actually have less, because everything would cost more than twice as much due to reduced labor productivity.

What we do have are employers (and their employees) who are subject to market discipline and those which are not. In this economy, the effect of unions is to extract money (in taxes, higher utility payments, etc.) from all so those who are protected from market discipline can have more.

The illusion is that unionism can lift all boats. It doesn’t because it can’t, because the source of income is labor productivity, which unionism decreases. Because unionism decreases labor productivity it can only be a negative-sum game- either immiserating all of us for the benefit of a very few (union bosses), or taking a little from everyone so that a somewhat larger few can have more.

When we had stronger unions, we had very little competition from the rest of world in durable goods production and sales. Gobs of foreign money were pouring into the US for our stuff because very few people elsewhere could duplicate what we did, mostly because we still had our industrial infrastructure intact and untouched by war damage. When so much capital is flooding into your system, you can get away with a lot of things you can in the leaner years, which, unfortunately, we seemed to have come to. Frankly, I'd almost rather go back to the bipoloar power structure, wondering if we're all going to die in the next thirty minutes rather than the cornucopia of uncertainty the multipolar world presents us. Obviously that's glib, but damn...I have a family to worry about now.

You still haven't stepped up to the plate, Alpha, to back up your personal accusations directed at me. Do you plan to? Or should I just assume you lack personal integrity and move on?

I recently saw a study that shows a worker is more likely to be hurt and/or killed on the job in those states that in a state with a stronger union presence. While I look for that link would you mind sharing what studies/info you have that leads you to think "everything is better" for employees in those states?

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if that's true, since there's almost certainly more manufacturing and similar jobs in states like mine. As for "everything is better" - that's based on my personal observations (having lived in both a very red state and a very blue one) and a huge number of variables. But I don't have to look for studies to prove that budgets are better balanced, cost of living is much lower, standards of living are much higher, and employers are more willing to set up shop in states like mine.

BTW, Scott, I do agree that international competition was a factor (less important) in declining wages. But the reality is that it was US corporations who so often shut down plants here to seek lower wages abroad.

It did not help matters that our government actually subsidized that in various ways (which unions opposed).

And we're not talking about the 40s and 50s here. But 60s and 70s.

Bottom line though is that this is a power struggle and working people have less power when unions are smashed. When unions are smashed, wages and benefits go down. We're living that in Wisconsin today, with take home pay reduced due to union busting.

Of course, in typical Repuglican fashion, the wages of lowest paid were reduced most (by %). Bastards.

Perhaps I was too harsh on you and you do not consistently engage in the tactics I called you on. I should have added a caveat.

Does that help the hurt feelings?

No feelings were hurt at all. You think far to much of yourself if you believe you can have that effect on me through a blog. What I object to is a blowhard making a generalization about me personally and refusing to back it up with specific examples. If they presented and valid, it would be something for me to learn from. Since they were not, and still have not been, I have to a assume you were engaging in an ad hominem attack because your own argument was weak.

you can chart the membership in unions in America against the wages and benefits of working people.

You can do that. And they you would find out that Alpha Liberal is wrong.

Look, Alpha and Freder, there's a reason why your side harps (and harps and harps) on income inequality. It's because in real dollars + benefits, middle class incomes have kept rising over the decades (the current recession being a downturn of course, but a downturn for everyone). This is especially true if you look at the most sophisticated analysis that factor in wealth transfers, tax rates, and different inflation rates for luxury vs. common goods.

The charts at the first four links, all the same as the one at Think Progress, do not show whether or not higher wages and benefits are tied to union membership. They show a correlation between declining union membership and the middle class share of national income, something quite different than what you're claiming.

Correlation does not imply causation, btw. Many other factors other than union membership may come into play, such as eduction. As the number of people with a collge education has increased dramatically, and tend to be employed on a professional level, fewer people would even be in the postion to join unions, for example. Many of these collge educated people are those who have become members of the 1% and the decline of unions does not necessarily have anything to do with the middle class share of the income.

Indeed, during period of time shown on the graphs, income went up for everybody. Just more so for some than others.

A $500 million program to use union pension funds to create construction jobs was announced today as members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council gathered here for a midwinter meeting. Thought I would toss in one example to counter the narrative.

I don't know all the details on Detroit. The problems there seem to be a mix of factors including corporate flight to low wage areas and countries, white flight for racially homogenous communities that we saw in cities across the country, the decline of Motown music (joke) and whatever.

Capital is very mobile and very disloyal to the people who helped to build it and the countries it grew in. For the past several decades, big American corporations have laid off Americans to hire cheap/exploited labor abroad. (This is now biting them in the ass as demand has plummeted because their customers don't have mcuh money - duh)

For example, the massively polluted country of China. Or S Korea, where labor unionists have been found floating dead in rivers time and time again.

We need to reform corporations, themselves, and the very rationale for their existence. Most founding fathers were very suspicious of them but now they have more rights than our citizens do! More and more they consolidate power to serve greed, greed and greed.

I was in Detroit back in the 1980s and literally saw wild packs of dogs.

One article:

Decades of white flight, coupled with the collapse of its manufacturing base, especially in its world-famous auto industry, have brought the city to its knees. Half a century ago it was still dubbed the "arsenal of democracy" and boasted almost two million citizens, making it the fourth-largest in America. Now that number has shrunk to 900,000.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/01/detroit-michigan-economy-recession-unemployment

Conservatives leap to blame unions for decline of US automakers. But the fact is that many of those companies put out some pretty crappy cars and they pioneered "planned obsolescence."

Because Detroit was so dependent on one industry, when that industry stumbled, they did not have other options. Pittsburgh had a similar experience but they have diversified successfully.

Do we really want the American people to have to work for 3rd world wages? From my own experience I know many working class conservatives do not seek that but business class conservatives very much do.

As long as this habit of demanding our neighbors be paid less continues, everyone suffers. From auto workers to public workers to truck drivers the most common refrain on wages is "they make too much." Well, what goes around comes around.

A $500 million program to use union pension funds to create construction jobs was announced today as members of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council gathered here for a midwinter meeting. Thought I would toss in one example to counter the narrative.